You’ve come to the right blog if you’re interested in learning more about researcher lives and cultures, how to navigate grants-speak and build your research track-record, and becoming part of an international community of scholars and research professionals.
The Research Whisperer is dedicated to the topic of doing research in academia. We’re here to help and encourage.
- We are not a ‘how to’ guide to doing research, but we do share strategies and practical tips and techniques that work for us.
- We don’t just talk about funding. Being a successful researcher involves much more than that, and calls on a wide range of knowledge and skills. Who you are as a scholar is a complex thing.
- We want to stimulate conversations, so our posts will be opinionated, hopefully constructive, and occasionally exploratory.
We expect that a fair number of our posts will be driven by your questions and interests, so please feel free to get in touch with us through one of the ways listed on our Contact page.
Since the Research Whisperer started in 2011, Tseen and Jonathan have written regularly for the blog. For years now, we’ve also worked with guest authors from all over the world. We actively solicit content for the blog from our wonderful collegial networks. We also consider unsolicited submissions.
Comments policy: We review comments before publication and your first comment on the blog will be held for approval (subsequent comments will not be held up). We seek to promote a collegial and supportive atmosphere. We will delete comments that we judge are not constructive or come across as aggressive or hostile.
help us help you
We receive a fair number of requests these days and it’s always great to hear from you, especially when you’re excited about sharing new projects and ideas. Here are a few points to consider if you’re asking us to help you with something:
- We both have full-time jobs that are not Research Whisperer.
- Research Whisperer is a non-profit intiative. We do not accept sponsored posts for the blog or our social media channels.
- We do not do reviews. If you send us books or resource links, we may read and comment about them on our social channels. Or we may not because we’re fully committed to other things (it’s not malice, it’s just lack of time).
- We’re more likely to help if you have done your homework and understand who we are, what our community is like, and what interests us (hint: check out what stuff we share on the socials and publish on the blog).
- These posts are very useful if you want to make sure your requests/invitations get a good reception:
- How to get the best from a busy person (Helen Kara)
- The art of the ‘cold call’ email (Inger Mewburn / Thesis Whisperer)
- Asking to share (Tseen Khoo, Research Whisperer)
- The care in requests (Narelle Lemon, Wellbeing Whisperer)
Want to use our material?
You are free to reproduce any posts from the Research Whisperer through the Creative Commons “Attribution-non commercial-sharealike” license. We would like to know how you are using our material, just out of interest, so feel free to drop us a line or include the link in the comments section attached to the feedback page.
Thanks to Wikimedia Commons user Cuman14 for the image Teoría de los Tres Mundos según Karl Popper, which we use as our profile image.
The Research Whisperer 
[…] resources for postdocs and ECRs, such as Elsevier’s Bigger Brains, The Postdocs Forum, and The Research Whisperer, but I would love it if some postdocs were interested in regular tweetups, akin to the #PhDChat. It […]
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Thanks for following “Honey.” I love what your blog is about. When I taught reserch many moons ago, would have loved the help.
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Thanks so much for the follow. The way we’re spending money, we might need to come back here and read some of your how to articles. 🙂
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[…] This week an introduction to a blog that I access on a regular basis and follow on Twitter, The Research Whisperer. […]
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I’ve just discovered this blog thanks to your featured article: as an undergrad delving into such things for the first time, I’m excited to pick your virtual brains. Quite glad this exists!
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Hey!
We are interested in using your material for our college blog https://nickledanddimed.wordpress.com/ . Can you provide us with your email id, so we could contact you.
Thanks
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Thanks, Danish
All of our material is licenced under a Creative Commons licence. You are free to reproduce any posts from the Research Whisperer through the Creative Commons “Attribution-non commercial-sharealike” license.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/au/deed.en
So as long as you attribute the authors, and it is not for a commercial purpose, please go ahead.
If you would like to discuss this more, please contact Tseen and I at
jonathan.odonnell@rmit.edu.au
Thanks for your interest.
Jonathan
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[…] some alternative less conventional approaches (and a laugh), with thanks to Jonathan O’Donnell for the link, see Justine Musk’s 25 badass ways to say no (explicit language […]
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[…] and resources. These include the Thesis Whisperer, Research Voodoo, #PhD chat, Grad Hacker and Research Whisperer. Plus, social media platforms like Twitter can give you a platform to promote your own […]
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Hello, I am from the CAMRT (www.camrt.ca) and I am using an attributed link from your page “Mind the Gap” in a research toolkit section I am creating for our members (this will be in a members’ only area not for the general public). Thanks for creating this great resource!
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Thanks, Carly
Glad you found it useful.
Jonathan
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Hi Tseen, Jonathon,
Are DOIs embedded somewhere and i just can’t see it?!
It would be great if each of the article published on The Research Whisperer had a DOI that way when I am using links to quotes in any training materials for researchers (I work in research admin) I can link effectively. I can then also add the reference to my RIS (endnote) and be able to find it later. Metrics could then also be used by authors and increase their visibility.
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Hi Lia
Unfortunately we don’t have the ability to generate DOIs for each Research Whisperer article. As far as I’m aware that isn’t a feature that WordPress (the blog platform that we use) offers.
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[…] post is what my colleague Dr Tseen Khoo calls ‘a career limiting move’, but right now I’m not under any contracts that […]
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